


steady your boats

by sibley (ferns)



Category: Stargirl (TV 2020)
Genre: Episode: s01ep12 Stars & S.T.R.I.P.E. Part One, Family Secrets, Gen, Missing Scene, really awkward car rides
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-05
Updated: 2020-08-05
Packaged: 2021-03-06 01:55:51
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,685
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25725481
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ferns/pseuds/sibley
Summary: The car ride to the cabin is long, and Mike has a lot of questions he's determined to get answers for.
Relationships: Michael "Mike" Dugan & Pat Dugan
Comments: 4
Kudos: 42





	steady your boats

**Author's Note:**

> Mike... I care for him. 
> 
> [ **CW:** this fic contains typically brief and relatively nongraphic references to attempted murder, past character death including parental death/spousal death, stabbings, unsanitary practices involving blood, and unhealthy behavior regarding pretty serious physical injuries.]

“Can you stop messing with that thing?” Courtney’s voice is slightly muffled, her face squished up against the window.

Mike shakes his head and turns the drill off and back on again, holding it up right next to his left ear so the sound will be clearer. Off, on. Off, on. Off, on. Off, on. Off, on. Off—

“Mike, why don’t you—” His dad tries to turn around in the passenger seat to hand him something, which earns him a poke from Barb.

“You’re going to hurt yourself. Just stay _still._ Mike, don’t be like your dad when you get older.” She takes the little cube from Pat’s hand and passes it back without taking her eyes off the road. Mike reluctantly swaps it for the bloody drill, clicking the little button next to his ear instead while the drill takes up residence on his lap.

“You said you’d tell me everything on the way to the cabin,” he reminds them. Click, click, click. “You _said_ you would.”

They’re stuck in the car with him. They can’t make him go back to his room and if they tell him he has to wait even longer he _knows_ he can bother them into talking before they get there. And he needs to know, because that guy was going to kill his dad and he saved him so he deserves to know. If they wanted him to prove he could help before telling him anything, he’d consider that a pretty solid audition.

Courtney winces. “Well, your dad—”

“No, we’re not doing this again,” Pat interrupts. “Court, you can talk about the things that happened later on, okay? The parts you were there for. The other stuff… let me explain that, alright?”

Courtney nods and slumps down in her seat as Mike does the opposite and sits up a little straighter. He switches from clicking the button to moving the gears on the other side of the cube by rolling it against his cheek. With his other hand he squeezes the handle of the drill tight enough to turn his knuckles white. He wants to know. He _deserves_ to know.

His dad takes a deep breath. “...Do you remember Sylvester? From when you were a kid? You were pretty little, so it’s fine if you don’t, but he used to come around a lot. He was like your uncle.”

“Um, I guess so. A bit.” There’s no face attached to the name, but there’s just enough recognition there to spark _something._ The barely-there memory of someone’s voice even if he can’t quite make out what they’re saying. “Why does it matter? Just _tell me.”_

“I’m getting there, be patient. And Sylvester’s an important part of the story. He’s kind of the reason for… everything. I met him when he was fifteen after I started working for his family, and a few months after that these people started trying to blackmail his parents.” He stops to cough, shaking his head when Barb moves to pull over. “I’m okay. There’s a first aid kit at the cabin, we’ll figure it out. Anyway, these people were threatening them. So he… uh… put on a costume and decided to try to fight them.”

Mike blinks. His first instinct is to say that’s stupid, because it kinda is. But there had also been a giant robot at the garage, and if he’d tried to tell him about _that_ without showing it to him he would’ve said it was stupid too. “Like a comic book?”

“Yeah. Just like that. Think he based it on a comic, actually. But this was real life, so I knew if I didn’t do something to help him he was gonna get himself killed.” Pat sighs. “I shouldn’t have encouraged him, but he needed someone to watch out for him. So we had a partnership, for a while. I stepped back a little when he turned eighteen and joined a new team. Then a few years after that you were born, and I tried to put it all behind me. I wasn’t very good at that. I missed it too much.”

Mike presses the gears harder into his skin so he can think more clearly. “You’re saying you were a superhero?”

“I was a sidekick,” his dad corrects him. “And more, sometimes, I guess. Sylvester didn’t have a good relationship with his parents. His adopted sister was the only one he kept contact with after he moved out. So I kind of filled that role for him.”

This is the part Barb and Courtney never really got to hear. There were other things that needed to be explained at the time. Stuff that was more important. But there’s time now. Not much of it, but there is.

And Mike’s a smart kid who can connect dots without help most of the time, so he asks—“Like, for the same reason we don’t talk to _your_ parents?”

Now Courtney is the one who sits up straighter. Barb doesn’t say anything, just glances at Pat out of the corner of her eye. She knows the whole bitter story, of course she does, and she remembers how hard it was for him to tell her. The last thing they need is to pry all of that out now.

Pat nods slowly. “Partially. He was, uh, he was gay, and they didn’t… Well, it doesn’t matter anymore. I think that’s part of why he latched onto me so much. He was my friend. But I was still trying to stay out of that life. I couldn’t get it right until you were about two.” He looks out the window. “That was when he and everyone else who was a part of it died. A group called the Injustice Society massacred them all. Except me.”

 _Kind of a dumb name,_ Mike wants to say. He doesn’t. “They all died?”

“Right in front of me. The only ones who made it out quit the game years ago—Johnny Quick and his wife Liberty Belle went into hiding, Black Canary dropped off the face of the Earth… I was the only one still semi-active who wasn’t killed that night. Ten years ago on Christmas Eve.” He swallows. “Sylvester, he… he died that night too. The bad guys all got away scot-free.”

Mike fidgets with the gears some more. The not-yet-dry blood on the bit of the drill is smearing onto his pants. Gross. Everything about that was gross. He’s going to hear the sound it made in his nightmares for years. “Was the guy at the garage one of the people who killed him? Is that why he was trying to kill you?”

He’s pretty sure that’s always going to be the scariest moment of his life. Seeing someone standing over his dad like that, with blood on the floor and on his face, knowing there was a chance he wouldn’t be able to stop it or do anything at all to help—he shudders. He lets go of the drill to snap his fingers twice by his ear before grabbing it again.

Pat nods again. “Yeah. Turns out a lot of them settled in Blue Valley, which I did _not_ know when we moved here. And then Courtney found the cosmic staff, a weapon that belonged to Starman, and started using it—”

“I’m Stargirl now,” Courtney says proudly. “I have a costume and everything.”

“She’s also grounded until she’s thirty, so don’t get any ideas about putting on a costume and running around fighting my evil boss and getting your ribs broken by angry jocks,” Barb says as she pokes Pat again.

“I _knew_ it. I _knew_ your boss was evil. I thought we just weren’t going to talk about it ‘cause he could fire you.” Mike goes back to turning the drill on and off for about thirty seconds so his vindication will feel even sweeter. “Why did you build the big robot?”

“Long story. Lately I’ve been taking it out to keep an eye on Courtney as long as she insists on being a superhero.” He coughs again, and this time some blood comes up. He tries very unsuccessfully to hide that from Barb, who lets go of the steering wheel to squeeze his hand.

Mike has _so_ many more questions. Like why Courtney gets to be a superhero when he doesn’t, even though he’s _barely_ younger than her (what’s three years of difference?), and if this has anything to do with his dad and Barb fighting, and if he can drive the robot, and why they’re going to hide at the cabin. He hasn’t even told him who that man at the garage was beyond “a bad guy.” And he’s going to get answers to all of them, he knows he is, but…

Seeing his dad getting hurt like that was scary. Knowing he’s still hurt isn’t quite as frightening, but it is close. So for once he’ll wait with his questions. Just this once. Until he has a better chance to ask him. When he knows he’s actually going to be okay, and this isn’t like in a movie where someone spits up blood and then dies three scenes later. At least despite the darkness he can tell they’re not far from their destination.

As it turns out, he doesn’t need to ask some of those questions, because Courtney has a few answers already prepared.

“That group, the Injustice Society, are trying to take over. At least the town, but probably as much as the whole country. Maybe eventually the world. We think they’re going to do some kind of mass-brainwashing thing. But my friends and I are gonna stop it,” she says confidently.

Mike takes his role of “annoying little brother” very seriously despite the fact that he’s only been in it for less than two years. “You have friends?”

Courtney reaches over to smack his knee. _“Yeah,_ I have friends. And they’re superheroes too. We’re the _new_ Justice Society.”

Mike frowns. “You’re called the Justice Society and you’re fighting a bunch of people called the _In_ justice Society?” 

Courtney rolls her eyes. “I did _not_ come up with the names. Those ones are your dad’s fault.”

Somehow, Pat still has the energy to argue, even though his eyes are half closed and he’s holding Barb’s hand a little too tightly. “I wasn’t consulted when Green Lantern, Wildcat, and the Flash named the Justice Society. Sylvester and I weren’t even on the team yet. And the Injustice Society named themselves on purpose. Blame them.”

Courtney very lightly kicks the back of his seat. “Mike, don’t listen to that, you can absolutely blame him. He thought it would be cool to run around calling himself _‘Stripesy’_ for, like, ever. He never gets to have an opinion on anyone else’s name being cool.” 

Mike pushes the gears into his lower lip. On any other day he would absolutely jump at the chance to join in and make sure his dad never, _ever_ lived down using a stupid name like that. He still kind of wants to, because it is _truly_ terrible, but… his dad’s still hurt. _Really_ hurt. That hasn’t changed in the past five minutes. No matter how many times he says he’s fine, he’s not gonna believe it.

“Can I ask one more question?” He says after about a minute. “I’ll wait until we get to the cabin for the rest. For the other ones I think Courtney doesn’t know the answers to. Promise.”

Courtney opens her mouth to say that she’s pretty sure she knows everything despite the pretty big gaps in her mental timeline largely prominently labeled with “Seven Soldiers of Victory bullshit.” Pat cuts her off.

“Sure, Mikey. I’ll tell you everything else when we get there. Promise.”

 _How come you told Courtney and not me?_ No, he said she _found_ the weird glowing stick that’s currently in the trunk of the car, not that he gave it to her. _Were you ever going to tell me if all this stuff hadn’t happened?_ Mike knows he was wanted, he was _always_ wanted, his parents went to a _lot_ of trouble to end up with him, and he has to believe that wanting him means his dad was gonna tell him. Eventually. He has to believe that, at least for now. Maybe that question should wait until they can actually talk face-to-face. _Was that guy going to kill me, too? Am I supposed to just pretend none of this ever happened? Won’t they just follow us? What the fuck is actually going on?_

None of those are what he ends up asking.

“Did Dad die because you were a superhero?”

The car is completely silent.

He probably should’ve waited on that one, too.

Mike holds the drill tight and waits for an answer.

“I don’t know,” Pat finally says quietly. His voice cracks a little. “I really don’t. I don’t think—I’m pretty sure it was what they said it was. An accident. But I don’t know. I tried looking into it, after it happened, but I didn’t—I _couldn’t—”_ He stops to take a few deep breaths. They catch on something out of place in his chest. “I don’t know. I’m sorry.”

Courtney’s eyes are big. Barb’s looking at him in the rearview mirror. Mike swallows. “Okay.”

Even if his dad’s been lying to him for… forever, he’s pretty sure that part’s true. It has to be true. Even if he’s been lying to him about everything, it _needs_ to be true, because he doesn’t think either of them could lie about that. Except when they had to, like when Mike was supposed to if he heard someone ask _like that._

He turns the drill on and off a few more times so he can think more clearly. He has to believe that’s true. He has to. And he has to believe that if it wasn’t really an accident, his dad would’ve found the people who did it and _hurt them._ Like how he hit the evil guy at the Pit Stop. On, off. On, off. On, off. On, off.

“Hey, we’re here,” Courtney says awkwardly as Barb slows the car. She squints out the window into the dark trees as her mom parks. “Are we first? It looks like we’re first.”

(She tries not to let that worry her. The longer it takes anyone else to show up, the more likely it is that they got hurt somewhere along the road.)

Nobody moves to get out until Barb sighs and opens her door. “Alright. Courtney, Mike, you’re both on unpacking duty. I’ll be out to help in a second. Pat, you’re going to sit on that couch and accept medical attention if I have to tie you down myself. Come on.”

Courtney apparently sees the other car somewhere in the darkness as soon as she gets out and runs over to see her friends, who are evidently real people. Mike can’t see them well, but he’s pretty sure one of them is that girl who came into their house and talked about ants for awhile. 

He gets out and goes around the car with the drill (his drill? Is it his now?) still in his hand so he can open his dad’s door without even thinking about it.

The hug his body suddenly decides he needs comes basically out of nowhere.

His dad winces—and for a second all Mike can hear is the awful crunching sound his ribs made when that guy slammed the door on them over and over—before gingerly hugging back and patting his shoulder a little.

“You’re gonna be alright, Mikey. I promise.” Pat can’t squeeze back as tightly as he wants without seeing stars from the pain, but he hopes the sentiment comes across all the same even with less accompanying pressure. “Everything will be okay.”

Mike isn’t completely sure he believes that, but for some reason there’s still enough of him left that wants love from his dad over anything else to make him at least okay with pretending.

**Author's Note:**

> I'm @augustheart on tumblr and I gave Mike a lot of my auditory stims.


End file.
